Sustainable Cities
This line of research studies forms of participatory urban planning that support decision making around disaster risk reduction and opportunities to build sustainable and equitable cities, especially in low and middle income countries. It covers the analysis of sustainable development, green infrastructure and its relationship with other social factors such as capacity building and social capital, poverty eradication, decent access to public services, rural/urban relationship, migration and food security, among others.
Research Projects
GCRF Urban Disaster Risk Hub - Tomorrow's cities
Main objective: Tomorrow's Cities is the Urban Disaster Risk Center of the UK Global Challenges Research and Innovation Fund (GCRF), an interdisciplinary research center that seeks to include multi-hazard disaster risk management in urban planning and development.
Publications
- Sevilla , E. et al. Intervenciones interdisciplinarias de historia pública para la educación en reducción de riesgo de desastres en museos y colegios públicos de Quito. Bedoya, M., Perry, J., Salge Ferro, M.(eds.). Comunidades Digitales, Museos e Historia Pública: experiencias en torno a América Latina. Bogotá, Quito: Universidad Externado de Colombia, USFQ Press. (On Press).
- Watson, C. S.; Elliott, J.; Ebmeier, S.K.; Vásquez, M. A.; Zapata, C.; Bonilla-Bedoya, S.; Cubillo, P.; Orbe, D.P.; Córdova, M.; Menoscal, J. and Sevilla, E. (en revisión, 2022). Enhancing disaster risk resilience using greenspace in urbanizing Quito, Ecuador. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.
- Valderrama, L. and Sevilla, E. (2021). La discusión pública de los pronósticos de terremotos de Rudolf Falb en Ecuador y la costa sudamericana del Pacífico (1869-1889). História Unisinos.
Researchers
Elisa Sevilla Pérez
PhD in Social Sciences, FLACSO, Ecuador. She is part of the international network LAGlobal that seeks to make visible the historical contributions of Latin America to global knowledge. Co-directs the interdisciplinary center “Tomorrow's Cities Hub” that focuses on disaster risk reduction in Quito of tomorrow. He currently teaches history at the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. Her interests include the history of science, 19th century scientific networks, collections and museums, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, history of astronomy and meteorology, the circulation of Darwinism and other scientific theories. It addresses the unequal recognition of the scientific work and ideas of women, indigenous, and non-experts in global networks of science, as well as the colonialism that permeates these relationships. Through history in collaboration with the social and geological sciences, she seeks to understand the root causes of risk, including poverty, inequality and misinformation. Part of the results of his research have been exposed to the general public in public history projects such as the exhibition at the Metropolitan Cultural Center “Espíritu de Red: Intelectuales, museos y colecciones, 1850 - 1930” in 2017 or the digital platform “Reducir Riesgos en Quito” launched in 2022.
Sofía Zaragocín Carvajal
PhD in Geography, University of Cambridge, England. Her research focuses on critical geography, in particular critical geopolitics and decolonial feminist geography. She has written on processes of death-body-territory in cross-border spaces, the geopolitics of the womb in spaces of slow death and the mapping of the criminalization of abortion in Ecuador, among other topics. She is currently working on a hemispheric study on hydro-social cycles, women and mining in the Americas and another study on the racialization of space and violence in Esmeraldas.
Juan Sebastián Aguilar
Master of Science in Economics, Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 2019. His areas of expertise focus on Development Economics, International Economics, Financial Education, Inequality and Social Mobility. His interests are economic development, inequality, economic policy and financial inclusion.
Diego Martínez G.
Sociologist and PhD in Social Sciences and Territorial Development from the University of Paris Saclay - AgroParistech - France. In 2016, His Doctoral research was awarded with the Honorable Mention in the category “Young Researcher - PhD” during the “INTERNATIONAL AWARD ON LOCAL DEVELOPMENT” in Portugal. Her priority lines of research are territorial transformations, social capital and territory, and inequalities of urban-rural actors and processes of social differentiation in relation to access to resources, local and global markets and territorial productive dynamics, among others. Among his latest publications are: “Territorial dynamics and social differentiation among the peasants of Cayambe in the northern highlands of Ecuador”, Journal of agrarian change, (UK); - “La desterritorializacion: Una noción válida para explicar el mundo rural del siglo XXI”, Revista Economía Sociedad y Territorio, (Mexico) and “Mercado de tierras agrícolas y Desterritorialización. A view from the Ecuadorian Andes”, Geograficando (Buenos Aires /Argentina).